*sigh*

Mushrooms

Chickens

Sagrada Familia

Parc Gaudi

Sangria

Elephant, Montjuïc

Segundo

More.

Just beautiful.

I’m back from Korea (boo), started my PhD (yay), moved house (yay) and I have the cutest little kitten snuggled up to me, sleeping.

Life is good.

• So shut up boyyyy, shut up boyyyy…

• Run Devil Run

• 2 Different Tears

• A little Korean hip-hop anyone?

• I Me My Mine

The only way you can visit the DMZ is on an organised trip. We departed from Seoul and our first stop was Imjingak. Imjingak is a place where South Koreans can come and experience the DMZ. It’s not actually in the DMZ, but it’s about as close as South Koreans can get to it without joining the army. Highlights included many monuments to the Korean War, a viewing point where you can sort of, if you’re lucky, see the DMZ, an abandoned train and Freedom Bridge. Freedom Bridge is famous as it was where ex-prisoners of war were returned to their countries (either North or South) after the Korean war. Oh yeh, there’s a mini theme park there too.

Korean War monument

Freedom Bridge

Abandoned train

Next up was into the Joint Security Area. This is a part of the DMZ, and is part of the village of Panmunjom. It was here that the armistice was signed at the end of the Korean war (and only an armistice, which means the Koreas are still technically at war). The army base here is called Camp Bonifas, and when we arrived we were briefed and told about all the security requirements such as not making *any* gestures with our hands, or moving to quickly. We were loaded onto a special military bus and had our passports checked another time and driven to the JSA.

We were driven to the JSA, lined up two-by-two and climbed the steps. At the top we saw, probably about 40-50 meters away, North Korea. The tension in the air was incredible. All around were ROK soldiers in reflective aviator sunglasses standing in menacing poses staring at the North Korean side. And on the North Korean side was an imposing, Soviet-looking, drab building which (apparently) was full of soldiers watching our every move. The border was marked with concrete slabs. No fence, no wire, no signs. Just concrete slabs.

We were allowed to enter the conference rooms where we could cross over to the North Korean side, though we had to make sure we stayed in front of the ROK soldier, as apparently the North Koreans have attempted to grab people from their door before.

The view from the ROK side. That's North Korea over there.

Keeping watch.

The border.

Inside the conference room. To his left, North Korea. To his right, South Korea.

See those footprints on the table? Apparently sometimes the North Koreans go into that room and walk bare foot on on them. Just ‘cos they can. It’s all very strange.

Finally, we got back on the bus and had a little tour of some of the DMZ, including Propaganda Village, a collection of hollow, empty houses on the North Korean side which they call the Peace Village. South Korea has something similar too, though real people live and work there. In return, they don’t have to take part in the compulsory military service and they pay no tax. We weren’t allowed to take any photos, but Propaganda Village has the world’s largest flag on top of the world’s largest flag pole. South Korea has a pretty huge flag on its side too, but clearly they gave up making it any bigger.

We also saw the place where the now infamous axe murder happened. A tree in the DMZ was blocking the view of a ROK viewing post and DPRK soldiers had attempted to kidnap soldiers from this post, so two US soldiers went to chop it down. They were approached by 14 or so DPRK soldiers who then murdered them. Of course, both sides tell a different story. After this, the UN demanded that the Military Demarkation Line (MDL) be strictly enforced within the JSA. Up until the murders, North Korean soldiers had freely gone over the Bridge of No Return.

Bridge of No Return

And that was it. We headed back to Seoul, and we were free to point and make as many sudden movements as we liked. As our tour guide said, we were free to do what we wanted in South Korea.

When you enter these motels there’s usually a black or frosted screen between you the customer, and the person at the check in desk so they can’t identity you. The corridors in these places are really dimly lit and it all seems kinda spooky. Having said that though, the rooms are really nice! As nice as any hotel I’ve ever been in, for a fraction of the price. In Daejeon we paid W40,000 (£22) for a night. Bargain! It had a huge flat screen TV, a computer with internet access and free drinks in the fridge waiting for us. Lovely. Other highlights included freebies advertising prostitutes and a red light in the room.

There’s something else I’ve only recently started noticing in Korea. What’s wrong with this picture?

There’s no number 4! This one completely omits the number, and others might replace it with an “F”, and other places have it in. I asked some Korean friends why this was, and apparently it’s because the Korean word for “4″ is “sa”, which sounds the same as the Korean for “death”. It’s not just Korea either, it’s all over East Asia. And it has a proper name, tetraphobia.

Anyway, I digress! We got up the next day after our bizarre night in the love motel and looked for somewhere to go. We settled on a park just outside of the city, but half way through our journey when we got to a train station we ended up just going to Seoul. Daejeon is a lovely city, and a wonderful place to live, but there’s not much to see and do if you’re a tourist.

Seoul has completely changed my view of Korea. I’ve had a great time here and I really do like it, but it’s not somewhere I would have considered to move to long-term. It’s still a very conservative country, they’re not very accepting of the gays. And then I went to Seoul. It’s totally different from Daejeon. It’s less homogenous. The people are more tolerant of diversity. It’s a huge city, but doesn’t suffer so much from that big city attitude that places like London do. It feels very welcoming and open, definitely somewhere I could consider living if the opportunity came up.

The only thing I didn’t like? Itaewon. Itaewon is the ex-pat area of Seoul, where the American soldiers hang out. It’s essentially one fairly big street that has been completely westernised, and at the bottom of the street is the main US army base. The Korea I’ve been used to over the last 9 weeks is one that is completely safe. I don’t think I’ve felt threatened here once. Until I went to Itaewon. There are loads of bars around, and that means loads of drunk people. And, at the risk of generalising, drunk Westeners are vile. Fighting in the street, yelling at each other. Yelling at Koreans for no apparently reason. Harassing the street food vendors. It honestly made me embarrassed to be from the West. But anyway, Itaewon is home to “Homo Hill” and we wanted to go check that out. Homo Hill consists of no more than 6 “bars” which were tiny, not much larger than the size of the average living room. They all had really terrible names too… Soho, Always Homme, Queen, Why Not?. Not somewhere I’ll be rushing back too in a hurry.

Seoul is a lovely city though and I’m very much looking forward to going back this weekend and exploring some more. Some pictures…

Don’t read anything into it though…

Lovely.

Takes a bit of getting used to, but after a while quite nice! Though I did have to put my feet flat on the bottom of the tank ‘cos it was getting too ticklish…

• Paying for a motel or hostel and being given little more than a sheet to put on the floor to sleep on is completely normal.
• I can eat anything, any size, any shape, with chopsticks. I can dissect food of any kind. On the rare occassion we go for a meal and we’re given a knife and fork, I sometimes have to take a few seconds to remember what to do with them.
• I’ve honed my eye for spotting the smallest piece of meat in my meal, and can whip it out without even thinking about it.
• I can zone out of general lab conversation (in Korean), but my ears prick up as soon as anyone starts calling for me.
• I bow when greeting or saying bye to people, and when thanking people.
• I speak a strange mix of Korean and English to other foreigners. Ballie ballie! (quicky!) Opseyo! (means so much… generally along the lines of “not”).
• Drinking alcohol isn’t the same without gombae! or Korean drinking games (banny banny banny banny… tangbang! tangbang!)
• I accept things with 2 hands, and I give things with my hand that’s not in use on my opposite elbow. It’s a respect thang.
• I speak much more slooooooowly and clearly than I used to. I suspect certain people back home will be thankful for this.
• I eat lunch ridiculously early (11:30), but still eat dinner quite late (6:30pm), which means I can go most of the day without any food. I’m not sure if this is a Korean thing, or specific to where I work.
• I know this is a bad thing, but I don’t hold the door for people. It’s the Korean way…

We decided that rather that just fly there and back, we would try to get the ship from the mainland to the island. So, we got the train bright and early and travelled to Mokpo, a smallish city in the south-west corner of Korea. From there we got the 6 hour ferry to Jeju. We travelled third class, which meant we all got put in a big room where we had to sit on the floor. A few months ago, before I came here, the idea of sitting on the floor would have been out of the question. It’s just not something we do here. But since I’ve been here, I’ve grown quite fond of the idea. Many restaurants require you to sit on the floor and most of the motels and hostels I’ve stayed in only give you a thin mattress to roll out on the ground to sleep on.

Mokpo

The ferry journey itself was fantastic. We departed Mokpo and sailed through probably hundreds of little islands. The views were amazing and we saw a beautiful sunset. We arrived in Jeju-si and met Yunseok, our IAESTE leader person, and Korean speaker. We bussed across the island to our first guesthouse and settled in for the night.

The next day we went to hire some scooters, but as none of us had an international driving licence (bizarrely, only one person in the group needed one), we couldn’t rent them. Instead, we hired a taxi for the day to take us around for the bargain price of W100,00o.

First stop was the Cheongiyeon waterfall.

Cheongiyeon Waterfall

We followed the stream to the ocean, to another waterfall. Apparently it’s one of the only waterfalls in Asia that falls into the sea… It was much more dramatic and impressive than the previous one.

Waterfall into the ocean.

Next stop, traditional Korean folk village. Not particularly exciting… Jeju is famous for its “stone grandfathers”, made of the volcanic stone (Jeju is a volcanic island), and they are said to guard the island.

Stone Grandfathers

The next day we climbed a smallish mountain called sunrise peak near Seogwipo. Edu and I set off early so we could get up there and relax, but it didn’t take nearly as long as we were expecting. We waited for the sun to rise, and when it did it was completely foggy, so we didn’t actually get to see anything.

Sunrise Peak

After a quick breakfast we headed to catch the ferry to take us to Udo. This island is like a mini Jeju, less touristy, relatively unknown and much less spoiled by mass tourism. The ferry journey only took 15 minutes and at the port we tried our luck to see if we could hire scooters. To our surprise, they let us. The only person they didn’t allow was Yunseok, as he was Korean and didn’t have a driving licence. Again, a little odd, but this is Korea. I’ve come to expect such quirks. So, off we set, scootering around the island. It took a little bit of time to get used to riding the scooters. We took the costal road around the island and it was a little disconcerting to have the sea to one side of you. Needless to say, I went slowly…

Badabadabadabada!

We saw the 8 scenic wonders of Udo in just over 2 hours, including some of the women divers (haenyo) that Jeju is famous for. These women go diving for seaweed and food, and then prepare and serve it on the beaches or on the rocks in almost make-shift restaurants. Fascinating to watch, and quite interesting for Korea…

We spent the rest of the day checking out some lava tubes. As I mentioned before, Jeju is a volcanic island, formed following the eruption of Mt. Halla, which is right in the middle of the island. As such, most of the rock is of the volcanic type (with the methane bubble appearance), and has extremely fertile land (which means they can grow, and are famous for growing, things like tangerines). The lava tube itself was about 1km long and at the end of it was a huge lava tower thing.

Lava tube. The hand pose is (apparently) from a famous Korean drama.

On the last day we climbed up the highest mountain in South Korea, Mt. Halla. Luckily for us, it wasn’t too warm and it didn’t rain all day. When we did climb to the summit (it took about 4 hours) it was foggy again! So we didn’t see much, except for the few seconds where the wind swept away the mist to reveal the crater lake at the top. At the point everyone on top of the mountain rushed over to get a glimpse, and then it was gone again.

Crater Lake, Mt. Halla

Top of Mt. Halla

And that was it! We spent our last night in Jeju-si and spent Monday morning lying around because everyone was too aching to do anything much, before getting our flight back to Daejeon. The flight was awful, probably the worst flight I’ve been on, because of the turbulence. Korean Air are marvellous though, and surprisingly they have a jumbo jet to fly the 45 minutes from Jeju to Daejeon, a relatively small airport.

Overall, Jeju was a fun weekend. I was treating it as my vacation for the year, as I didn’t plan this placement very well as I’m head back to Uni straight away when I get back from here. It wasn’t what I expected though… The tourism information for Jeju makes it seem as though it’s a rural, quiet, paradise island where honeymooners can go and relax for a few weeks. The reality is that it’s a very built up, large, touristy island with loads of hotels, over-priced restaurants and tacky amusements (Love Land, the Teddy Bear Museum etc.). The beaches around Jeju are stunning though. It’s really difficult to get around Jeju if you don’t hire a car. The busses are okay, but they’re all in Korean, and despite the quite high numbers of foreign tourists, still aren’t in English. Luckily for us we had a Korean with us, but without him I’m not sure what we’d have done.

Having said that, we still had a great time. The highlight? Udo. Scootering around is such great fun, and really is the best way to see places like this. Udo is beautiful, and probably the closest to what Jeju was like. No cars, not many tourists and rugged, natural scenery.

More photos!

Why? Translating the menu says that it’s because they “expected to make a lot of rain in a noodle noodle party has changed”.

Priceless. I love you, Google Translate.

We arrived on Friday evening and checked into our motel, went for a few drinks, had a little wander around the dong and got an earlyish night.

On Saturday morning we began our sight seeing. First stop, the beach. But not any beach, oh no. This beach has some rocks about 200m away from the coast which is a tomb, the tomb of King Munmu.

The Tomb of King Munmu

Then we headed back into the city to do a tour of the Gyeonju National Museum. There was so much stuff to see here. The tour guide who showed us around only took us to a small selection. We did get to sample some tea though, and saw some fascinating Buddhist art, as well as some ancient Korean bling. However, the highlight of the museum was the Emille Bell. This is essentially a giant bell, from a temple, which when struck lightly can be heard 3km away. I’m not sure how true this is though, as we weren’t allowed try.

Emille Bell

After the museum, we went across the road to the site of a royal palace and a beautiful lotus pond, Anapji. The pond was reconstructed in 1974-5, and many relics were found, most of which are now in the museum. At this time of year though, the pond is stunning, with lotus flowers in bloom as far as the eye can see.

Anapji Pond

Next, the oldest observatory in Asia, Cheomseongdae Observatory. This simple structure is constructed from 12 stones around the base (one for every month), 30 stones high (one for every day in a month) and has a total of 366 stones altogether (almost one for every day of the year).

Cheomseongdae Observatory

Close to this were more tombs, the Noseo-dong tombs,  this time formed as mounds in the earth made of stone, and covered in soil and grass.There were loads of these peppered around the city – it’s quite an odd site to see.

Noseo-dong Tombs

We finished the day at a resort park, where we hired mini quad bikes and motorcycles, and rode around like kids. Fun!

On Sunday, we went to see two of Korea’s UNESCO World Heritage Sites: the temple at Bulguk-sa and the Seokguram Grotto. Both of these places were stunning, honestly some of the most tranquil places I’ve been to.

The grounds from the Bulguk-sa temple

The Buddha in one of the buildings at Bulguk-sa temple

Dragon detail at Bulguk-sa

Climbing the arduous steps. You're supposed to make a wish while doing so.

Piles of stones, something to do with praying...

Lanterns at Seokguram Grotto

View from the Seokguram Grotto. In the distance you can see the Sea of Japan

And that’s it! All in all, a great weekend.

More photos!